Posts in Category: Tata Nano

MUMBAI: Infusing fresh life into its micro car Nano, Tata Motors on Monday launched a new top end variant of Nano called 'Twist' at Rs 2.36 lakh, ex-showroom New Delhi.

Enhanced to fit its new positioning of 'Smart City Car', the car now comes with electric power steering for and comes loaded with improved beige interiors, new instrument cluster with driver information system, redesigned gearshift console and Damson Purple, a new colour. The price of Twist is 14,000 more than the existing top variant LX.

"About 55% of the population in this country is aged below 25. Nano in its new vibrant and youthful avatar offers a very good alternative to the youth of this country. We only expect the sales to go upwards from here," said Ranjit Yadav, president head, passenger vehicle business unit at Tata Motors.

The Nano Twist has features like remote keyless entry, twin glove boxes and a four-speaker music system with Bluetooth.

The car, aimed at the first time car buyers has increasingly found buyers who are using it as a second car in the family and has been reaching out to more youths.

Of the total number of cars sold by the company in 2012, only 20% of buyers fell in the age bracket of 18-34, the share more than doubled to 55% in 2013. To build the youthful and aspirational value around the brand, Tata Motors through its Awesomeness branding and marketing campaign, have worked with Masaba Gupta, fashion designer and for Nano Twist, it has already tied up with Sunburn festival. Tata Motors promises more on-ground activities and showcases in colleges to woo youth.

The company expectsthe Nano Twist variant sales to make up for 50% of its overall Nano sales going ahead. In the April to December of 2013, the cumulative sales of Nano have declined by a whopping 71.76% year on year to 13,391 units. The company is aiming to build family of Nano cars from Rs 1.55 lakh to Rs 3.25 lakh.

Last year, the company launched the CNG version with the EMAX variant, the Twist is the new addition to the family and going ahead the company plans to bring in a more souped-up version with a one litre engine.

Tata Motors has reinvented its iconic small car, the Nano yet again. After a facelift last year, Tata has made one serious change to the Nano this time around, equipping it with an electric power steering system. The latest avatar of India's most affordable car is called the Tata Nano Twist and has been launched on January 13.

The electric power steering unit, developed by ZF in collaboration with Bosch, should address what was widely considered as one of the car's biggest weaknesses, a heavy steering, especially at parking speeds. The new EPS unit uses a 'brushless' motor and has an 'Active Return' feature (that returns the wheel to the centre after being turned either way) that the carmaker claims is unique in this segment.

The new Tata Nano Twist also gets an all-new instrument cluster with LED fuel and temperature gauges, and readouts for active fuel consumption and distance to empty. The other new feature on the Nano Twist will be the all-new Damson Purple paint shade.

The new Tata Nano Twist is priced at Rs 2.36 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the top-end XT variant, Rs 13,000 more than the current LX model. This price point puts it closer to other entry-level hatchbacks like the Hyundai Eon which is priced from Rs 2.89 - 3.95 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) and Maruti's Alto 800, which is priced from Rs 2.45 - 3.65 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).

It is best not to use terms like ‘all-new’ and ‘next-gen’ when it comes to each successive Tata Nano, as that is not Tata Motors’ strategy for this car – at least for now. Like we’ve seen over the years since its launch, the company prefers to give its small city car sequential updates annually to make it more appealing, rather than massive overhauls. That’s understandable, as a whole load of updates at once would push the price of this car up and prove counter productive.

So, over the last few years, we’ve seen the addition of gloveboxes, a left wing mirror and an audio system, to name a few, and improvements to the suspension, seats, ergonomics, engine and gearbox – basically just about every single part of the car. Which means, in essence, this Nano is far improved from the one Tata Motors launched back in 2009.

Now, for 2014, there’s just one mechanical update, but it’s a big one, and one that’s been a long time coming. As you may have guessed from the suffix given to this latest version – Twist – the Tata Nano is now available with power steering. It’s a brushless electric power steering (EPS) unit that’s been developed specially for the Tata Nano Twist by ZF in collaboration with Bosch. This may be the most affordable car in the world, but there’s no stinting when it comes to essential bits; these suppliers are some of the best in the world.

So what has it done for the Tata Nano? In a nutshell, it’s made it much better suited to its purpose – of being a compact runabout for the city. On the non-power-assisted car, you have to wrench the wheel around at parking speeds and low-speed agility is really poor. All the effort and concentration required meant you often preferred not to change course and just dive in an out of gaps. Not anymore.

The Tata Nano CNG emax is powered by a fuel efficient engine, with CNG and Petrol bi-fuel system options. The car has gives a claimed mileage of 36 km/kg as per ARAI standard test conditions.

The mini car will now be available across CNG markets like Delhi, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra and Lucknow.

Ankush Arora, senior vice president, Passenger Vehicle Business Unit (Commercial), Tata Motors, said, From its inception, the Nano has been a path-breaking invention and the CNG version only adds to that and also underlines our commitment to be a sustainable automotive player."

The sequential gas injection system of the Tata Nano CNG emax, is calibrated with an intelligent advanced Engine Management System (EMS) for smart switching between CNG and Gasoline fuel systems.

This allows the vehicle to sense when the driver needs more power and thus, automatically shifts to gasoline mode. Switching between CNG and petrol driving modes on-the-fly becomes effortless due to a push-button fuel type selector.

Additionally, the Tata Nano CNG emax can also be started on CNG and not on petrol like other conventional CNG systems. The car comes with

With the CNG technology, the Nano CNG emax offers a touring range of more than 150 km (in CNG), in addition to the existing touring range of 375 km (in petrol). Combined mileage of the car is 525 kms.